Real Estate

More momentum in housing than stocks, Shiller says

Shiller: Signs of softening in housing
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Shiller: Signs of softening in housing

With recent signs that housing may be slowing down a bit, Nobel Prize-winning economist Robert Shiller told CNBC on Tuesday that he'd still describe the recovery as strong.

"There is a certain, substantial amount of momentum in the housing market—much more so than the stock market," the Yale University professor said in a "Squawk Box" interview.

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"I think this boom we saw in the last year and a half in home prices has something to do with quantitative easing and the record low mortgage rates," Shiller said.

How is your mortgage rate determined?
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How is your mortgage rate determined?

But with signs of possibly higher rates and the Federal Reserve tapering its bond purchases—so far in three, $10 billion chunks—to $55 billion a month, mortgages won't be historically cheap forever, he added.

"The way prices have been increasing since the spring of 2012, it [looked] like a no-brainer to get into the market for a while," he continued. "[But] now there are signs of softening" in building permits and housing starts.

Shiller cautioned that he didn't want to be an alarmist—saying home prices are "kind of at a normal level" right now. He added: "My son just bought a house. I told him, 'Fine.'"

As for housing prices in years to come, "the futures market at the CME is predicting something like 25 percent higher home prices in 2018," the co-founder of the Case-Shiller Home Price Index said.

"That seems like a possibility," he added.

—By CNBC's Matthew J. Belvedere.